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Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland
  Orange Standard

Intensive Debate Over Schools In Northern Ireland

Article 1 ~ March 2006

During the recent intensive debate on education, when some people were making a noise about 'Roman Catholic schools and Protestant schools' a contributor to a discussion on BBC Radio Ulster's 'Talkback' programme rang to make a very important point.

The man corrected what he felt was an incorrect impression given by the discussion, pointing out that there are "no Protestant schools in Northern Ireland today".

The man stressed that there were Roman Catholic schools, Irish language schools, and integrated schools, but no Protestant schools.

The contributor was almost completely correct. There are a few Protestant schools. Two of them are primary schools under Church of Ireland management, and there are a number of Christian schools run by the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster.

These are only a handful of all the schools in Northern Ireland, and apart from this point, the contributor to the debate got it right in his assertion.

Had the Orange Order been successful in its vociferous and high profile campaign in 1926, the main Protestant churches would have retained control of at least half the primary schools in Northern Ireland.

But the Church of Ireland, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches yielded to the pressure by the Northern Ireland Government and handed over control of its schools to the State.

The carrot produced by the Government was that the Protestant churches would retain a strong position on the management boards and education committees, and their clerical and lay representatives would have a big say in appointments and curriculum.

That was largely the position for decades, but in recent times there have been moves to reduce the Protestant representation on State school management committees, and to secularise the State sector.

Ironically, England, long regarded as a much less religiously inclined country, has a large proportion of Faith schools, at least half of them Church of England schools.

And in the Republic of Ireland, Protestant parents make big sacrifices to send their children to schools under the management of Protestant Churches, mainly the Church of Ireland.

In Northern Ireland, the intention in the early 1920s, just following the establishment of the new State, the intention of the Government was to reduce sectarianism by creating an educational environment in which most children were educated in State schools.

The Roman Catholic Church refused to endorse such an arrangement and held on to control of its own schools. In the days of the Northern Ireland Government the grants made to the Roman Catholic sector, both for building and operation of schools were the most generous in the United Kingdom - 65 per cent in Northern Ireland, when the grant in the rest of the UK was 50 per cent.

Nowadays the Roman Catholic sector is responsible for half the pupils in the Province, retaining full control of its schools. Protestant children, along with Muslims, Hindus, non-religious and other denominations attend State schools.

There are hardly any Protestant schools in existence in Northern Ireland. In the interests of accuracy and the truth, it would be a big contribution if commentators and observers dropped the word 'Protestant' and referred correctly to 'State' schools.

Sadly, as far as the Orange Order is concerned, and many parents, Protestant schools disappeared almost completely from the Northern Ireland education scene in the mid-1920s.

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